Please exercise caution when riding the escalator. Hold handrails and exit promptly upon reaching the landing.

Monday, February 02, 2009

For All You Grocery Shoppers... Breaking Laces at the Rockwood Music Hall

No time for fornication

but once I quit my paper route she'll want my body

Did he really say that? Yeah, I think he did.

Going in, I had no expectations other than some chick named Jill told me she was friends with the drummer. But Breaking Laces totally put a little salsa on my tortilla chip. It was top-shelf spicy sauce magnified by the Rockwood, a tiny tiny brick-walled hole in the L.E.S. How tiny is it? If someone in the band did a high kick they'd probably take down the bartender.

The bass player looked like Dave Faulkner should he become a surfer. The singer had a Death Cab for Cutie moonfaced vibe going on. Although unlike the lead singer of Death Cab during the autumn of 2005, he did not feel the need to demonstrate he can play the drums by firing up a seven minute solo on a miniature drum kit, which I did not feel accentuated my overall concert experience at the time nor subsequently.

In addition to his mad pipes and feisty lyrics, the frontman of Breaking Laces also laid down some entertaining banter. Like the comment about a song named Megan which his girlfriend Sarah figured out wasn't about her because she's quick like that.

As far as their musical influences go, they have a different one on a song-by-song, sometimes stanza-by-stanza basis. It's like an audio patchwork quilt of musical inspirations. Besides Death Cab, I detected Guster, Chevelle, Nirvana, BRMC, Breaking Benjamin (So Cold), Audible, Lifehouse (?!), snippets of the Disturbed, OK Go's first album, Hawthorne Heights, maybe the Lemonheads, BNL or along those lines... The clumps of Other Bands makes for one hell of a killer awesome fiesta platter live show. Although it occured to me Breaking Laces might need a little more time in the oven for all the juices to mingle and come into their own.